How to Be More Trustworthy and Trusting

One way to get more out of life and to become an influential person who is trustworthy is to be someone who has high moral standards and values and demonstrate that fact with your actions. The best thing about that is that the more trustworthy you are, the more trusting you will become.

Know Your Core Values

It’s hard to make decisions if you don’t know what you want your core values to be. For example, if you believe in peace, justice, and generosity as a core value, you can ask yourself before any choice whether the decision aligns with those values or not.

Keep Your Commitments

Don’t say yes to anything unless you know you can keep your commitment. When you do say yes, put it in your schedule so that you don’t forget. The more dependable you are, the more people will trust you.

Practice Transparency

It really depends on the situation, no one thinks you should be an open book offering too much information to the world, but you should be open and honest about anything that would cause mistrust if found out. For example, if you’re a vegan blogger who sometimes eats fresh fish from the ocean when you go sailing, you better be open about that because if you’re not your audience will discover it and think you’re a liar.

Be Honest

If you feel like you need to lie about something, it’s best not to say anything. Even compliments fall short if they’re not genuine. If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything but don’t say a lie to be nice either. An extreme example is telling your 100 pounds, overweight friend, that they’re not fat. They are fat, but it isn’t all they are. Don’t be condescending.

Don’t Be Late

One thing that can make people not trust you, and probably makes you not trust others, is never being on time. Yes, sometimes things happen, but if it happens to you regularly, people will not trust you. Find a way to be on time most of the time so that lateness is a sign of something going wrong for you and not part of the perception of you people have.

Don’t Gossip

If your friends tell you secrets, never say one word about them to anyone, not even your spouse. Being able to keep confidences makes you an extremely trustworthy person. Just remember, someone else’s story is not yours to tell.

Say You’re Sorry

If you do anything to be sorry for, tell people. Learn to offer a sincere apology too. Saying you’re sorry is only part of it. You need to really be sorry and really accept fault, and if possible, make reparations.

Control Your Emotions

Your emotions shouldn’t control you. If you are generally an emotional person and it shows, learn how not to overreact. For example, if you get angry when you are hungry, ensure that you keep a schedule for eating to avoid that. If you cry easily when someone else is crying, that’s okay if you don’t go overboard and grab all the attention. Read and learn about stoicism to help you gain control over your emotions.

Have a Positive Attitude

Positivity can go a long way to helping you seem trustworthy to others. In fact, think about the positive people with a good attitude that you know. You probably like being around them more than people who complain a lot. You don’t need to be a robot, but don’t focus on the negative aspects.

If you want to trust people more, make sure you are worth trusting yourself. Knowing your core values is essential to helping you become more trustworthy because you can always look to your values to guide your choices. The fallout from doing this is that you will start to become more trusting too.